Doin' the Junkyard Shuffle
by cagd
Summary: Janine leaves for two weeks, only to come back to a junk filled firehouse, and a double possession. Peter and Winston don't seem too concerned, she can't find Ray and Egon, and the Health Department is not happy with anybody.
1. Chapter 1

For most of us, there's always this sensation of dread when coming back to work after a long break, which generally falls somewhere between: "I hope they didn't switch desks on me!" and "Oh my God, I hope I still HAVE a job!"

One early July morning, after two week's "vacation" in Hawaii helping Arlene, a not-so-favorite cousin with her wedding, an apprehensive Janine walked up to the front door of the fire station, took out her key while wondering "What's that smell?", slid it into the lock, and screamed when an avalanche of garbage tumbled out, burying her.

Grinning sheepishly, Slimer oozed out of the pile burbling, "Surprise!"


	2. Chapter 2

"Sooooo, you're back early." Peter Venkman said as he and Winston Zeddmore dug Janine out of the mess covering the already grimy sidewalk.

"I'm back… I'm back… early? Is that all you can say? I leave for two weeks, TWO WEEKS and… and… I left a list,.. trash day is every Tuesday before 6 a.m.…" Janine sputtered, old macaroni and cheese falling out of her hair as they picked her up by her elbows and set her on her feet, "All you guys had to do on Monday night was put the trash from the little cans into the big cans that live under the fire escape, and then… oh my God, I have old chili in my bra, and is that… oh my GOD, maggots!"

"Uh, do you really want this back?" Winston handed Janine her purse and then stepped away as Janine swung at him with it while swatting at her bra with her free hand.

"Yes!" Janine tipped her purse out on the sidewalk in a mix of soggy cornflakes and Paris Passion red lipsticks, "I mean, NO!"

"Hey, it isn't our fault this time!" Peter ducked as Janine swung it by the strap at his head in a fan of damp cereal flakes which Slimer happily caught in his mouth before they hit the pavement, "Honest!"


	3. Chapter 3

"So, Ray and Egon are in there still, and it's filled to the third floor with, _that?"_

Janine turned off her blow dryer, and waved at the trash can beside her stove in her tiny kitchen with its jungle of houseplants and stacks of second-hand cookbooks,

"Yep." Winston paused in the middle of shaving in the kitchen sink with one of Janine's pink razors.

"And you guys said nothing - what about the Health Department?"

"Nnnnnnnnnnope." Winston checked out his sideburns in a stainless steel mixing bowl before making a delicate pass with the razor at the bottom of the left one. "Health Department says we have a month to clear it all out or the building's condemned."

"By the time they put the jet engine on your desk and piled ten mailbags full of old golf balls around it, we were outta there." Peter added from her bathroom. "I wouldn't worry though: the Health Department will get over it if we don't blink."

"A MONTH?" Elbows on her kitchen table, Janine buried her face in her hands - that plus right in front of her, judging by the length of time Peter was spending in her shower, she could expect a huge water bill unless she did some fancy bookkeeping and listed it as a business expense. "I should have stayed in Hawaii with cousin Arlene!"

"Hey, that's better, " Peter casually wandered out in a cloud of steam wearing only a towel around his waist, "Hey, Janine, didja you know the Y_ charges_ for this?"

Janine looked up and glared at Peter: she'd double the amount, too!

The two men had been living out of Ecto-1 for over a week once the fire station became unlivable, hanging her desk phone out the nearest window and charging their proton packs from an electric line they'd pirated from under the fire escape.

The entire back seat of the converted ambulance was piled with unemptied traps and uncashed checks.

"Well, why didn't you do something?" Janine said as she pushed past Winston and the kitchen table before shoving past Peter and into her now wet towel draped bathroom pulling the door shut behind her with a bang. She re-opened the door, threw Peter's clothes out into the hall, and slammed the door, locking it behind her.

"We thought we'd wait until you came back." Peter called through the thin wood of the door. "You always know how to handle this sort of stuff so we don't have to."

"Gee, thanks!" Janine snarled, slamming down the seat and the lid with its fluffy day-glo orange cover and sat on it with folded arms. She glared at her reflection in the steamed up bathroom mirror: this was NOT how she had planned her return while ducking the losers her well-meaning elderly aunts and cousin Arlene's mother had thrown at her all through the wedding. Noooo, as a way to keep her sanity, she'd entertained the fantasy that after work on the first day back, if the guys weren't out on a job, she'd ask Egon over to help her set up her new VCR.

In return, she'd offer him dinner, something _delivered_, like pizza: Janine had learned her lesson in that department,

Then there was that unopened bottle of champagne she'd swiped from the buffet table at the wedding while everybody followed Barbie-doll Arlene and her tubby middle-aged Hassidic diamond broker of a new husband around the reception hall in their decorated chairs... then "Casablanca" on the new VCR… by then it would be late and luckily it would be raining… her couch was small but there was always room for two… and it MIGHT have ended up with them eating breakfast together the next morning playing footsie under the table at that little pastry shop around the corner… and if it made them both late for work, it would be worth the knowing looks from the rest of the staff.

"Awwwww, shit!" Janine snapped, taking off her now steamed up glasses and polishing them with toilet paper before blowing her nose hard, "Why me?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Now tell me again why you guys just didn't go home to shave?"

"I gave up my apartment– it's cheaper and I own one third of the building." Peter shoved a donut into his mouth, and washed it down with coffee, He shrugged, "Or I _would_ if I ever remembered to pay my share of the mortgage."

Janine, sandwiched in between the two large men in the front seat (there was no WAY she was going to ride in the back with that sizzling, pile of steaming traps) looked over expectantly at Winston, "I moved in after my big sister Yasmin moved into my mama's place in Bed-Stuy with her six kids. My girlfriend didn't like it when the kids wouldn't let us watch "Oprah." Winston mumbled while making a left turn into traffic.

"And Slimer would live in the toilet if you'd let him." Janine added under her breath as the old firehouse came in to view.

The mess was up off of the sidewalk but there were two more health department notices fluttering on the front door, joining the dozen older ones. Janine also noticed that the windows on the second and third floors had been blocked off with everything from scrap lumber to cardboard boxes.

An unkempt figure in a ratty bathrobe paused and stared at them in the early morning light before scuttling into a side door, slamming it hard behind him.

"Oh my God, was that Ray?" Janine leaned over Peter, half out the open ambulance window and causing him to spill coffee all over the bottom half of his jumpsuit, "What the Hell REALLY happened while I was gone?!"


	5. Chapter 5

"We couldn't take the smell any more. So we told Slimer to keep an eye on things and come get us in case we needed to step in." Hands on hips, Peter leaned back, staring up at the blocked windows while sucking on a toothpick. "The stink was worse than anything we've ever trapped – hey look, they've started piling stuff on the roof. Is that a grand piano?"

"Worse than the Collyer brothers." Added Dirty Sadie the bag lady whose beat this area was had joined them, Yankees cap, combat boots, and all. She continued. "I should know. We lived down the street, my little bro' an' me. We sats on our stoop watching what happen' when the City broke down th' door an' all the junk inside done come pilin' out. " Sadie adjusted all six of her moth-eaten sweaters despite the early July heat, adding, "Didja know that they done had 3,000 books and a big ol' Steinway piano in there? Watchin' the City clean that place out was better than a Saturday dime Lone Ranger matinee with not one but TWO cartoons!"

"That's nice, Sadie." Peter said absently as he unconsciously moved upwind, eyes still on the firehouse roof. "Here's a dollar, now go away."

"They also had an x-ray machine and a horse's jawbone in there!" Ignoring Peter's bribe, the bag lady giggled, "And poor ol' smelly Langly done got hisself squashed – we watched them carry the body out – you could smell him three doors down!"

_"Squashed?"_ Alarmed, Janine stared at the old lady that she occasionally shared her lunch with, "SQUASHED?"

"Langly done set up hisself all sortsa booby trap to guard all his stuff and done caught hisself: pbbbbttttt!" Sadie gave out the wheeze which passed as a laugh for her while leaning on her battered shopping cart, "Serve he right, too! Me? I travels light; if it don't fit in the shopping cart, it done stay on the curb!" She fanned herself with her hat while adding through gapped brown teeth, "Shame about poor Homer, though, He blind - starved to death waiting for Langly to come feed him his 100 hundred oranges and peanut butter on black bread to hear my daddy talk about it – it was all in the papers." Sadie pulled out a cigar butt from somewhere and lit it, "Real shame about Homer – he was smart. Daddy done tol' me he was a lawyer or something. Them ghosty mens was smart, _real_ smart!" Sadie took a long speculative, drag before adding, "Too smart for they own good, if you ax me!"


	6. Chapter 6

"My gramma always used to tell me that I'd wind up like the Collyer brothers if I didn't start picking up after myself more." Winston leaned over Janine and tapped the microfiche screen that displayed the long, sad dirty story of the Collyer brothers from forty years before in newspaper format. "You think old Sadie is right?"

"Nah, can't be." Peter shrugged, "This is a waste of time."

Winston ignored Peter, "Janine, you weren't here when we got a call to come deal with a possession – the family told us that their grandparents had always been neat freaks, but suddenly they started collecting everything in sight and their place went to Hell."

"I said that was Social Services' job, not ours, to deal with crazies." Peter put his booted feet up on the table beside the bulky reader only to take them off when a passing librarian gave him a dirty look. "But nooooooo, Egon and Ray said this might be some sort of rare thing-a-ma-bob and we should at least check it out."

"They were right, the PKE meter told us there were two spooks hiding in the grandparents. So we went in after them – it was worse than tunnel rattin' in 'Nam - we didn't even know how to get 'em out of the people once we cornered them!"

"Crap was piled to the ceiling – rats everywhere – I had to burn all our coveralls to get rid of the fleas!" Peter complained, "But that's not all boys and girls – while going through the maze of junk in that brownstone, Ray set off some sort of trap and got him and Egon buried. The fire department had to dig 'em out. I mean, they had a crate of Civil War CANNONBALLS in their living room hanging from the ceiling… by a clothesline!"

"Our traps were empty –the old couple acted like it had never happened – the old lady just about had a nervous breakdown when she saw what had been done to her living room. We thought the ghosts escaped during the uproar…"

Peter interrupted: "Worse, we didn't get paid!"


	7. Chapter 7

"If it's anything like that last place, I'm NOT going in after 'em." Winston stated firmly, "I don't have enough insurance!"

"You guys are facing huge fines and a disposal bill if you don't." Janine countered, stepping over Louis Tully, their occasional lawyer's body.

Janine had called the nervous little man before leaving her apartment. Having taken a job with The Trump Organization as a legal accountant, they hadn't seen much of him for a while. Clad in a dark well-tailored tailored Brooks Brother's suit and new designer glasses, Louis stepped out of the company limo, stumbled over the curb, took one look at the fire station and the building inspector adding to the citations to the front door with a staple gun, and promptly passed out.

"Gee, big help there, Louis." Was all Peter said as the limo drove off. Winston had dragged their legal department to the side while the man stapling citations to the door said, "Not my job." and walked off.

"Says here," Janine waved a stack of microfiche prints on the Collyer brothers incident, "That it was too dangerous for the police to even attempt a rescue at first – the New York Sanitation Department had to remove several hundred pounds of junk from the front entrance just so the coroner and the cops could come in - guys, I don't like the sound of this - and remove the… bodies."

"At least we know Ray's still alive, if him running around the street in his bathrobe's any sign." Peter took the printouts from Janine and looked them over, "Says here the place was booby trapped, too –Ray's a clever little pixie in that departmentm seeing what he did to me with the garbage disposal after I traded his still in the box Wonder Woman action figure for a case of bar-b-cue potato chips during last year's Super Bowl."

"Coroner? What you need is a 'Nam tunnel rat armed with a flash light and a gas mask." Winston rattled the front door, "Look there's two new deadbolts on this thing. Ray must have installed them when we went to Janine's - God knows what he's set up inside for anybody stupid enough to try to go in after him – look at all that crap piled up against the windows!"

"Afternoon, Janine." They turned; the mailman was trundling up the sidewalk with his little cart. "Good time in Hawaii?"

"Uh, yeah, sorta."

"Not much for you today. Anyway your mail slot's blocked from the inside. I'll have to hand it to you." The postman handed Janine a pile of envelopes mostly marked, "Past Due".

"Gee, thanks."

"Always happy to share the love!" Whistling, the mailman rumbled on past, pauseing to look at the unconscious Louis, "Must have been some night!" before continuing around the corner,

"I laid out EVERY bill that you guys needed to pay while I was gone on my desk, ready to drop into the mailbox on the corner on specific days. How hard is it…" Janine rolled her eyes when Peter smirked, pointing at the firehouse with its trash blocked windows and doorways… "Oh, forget it!" she snarled, "Hi, Sadie, find anything good?"

Dirty Sadie parked her battered shopping cart, using the unconscious Louis to keep it from rolling off the curb and into the street, "Jus' a li'l ol' Jewish accountant with a cheap law degree, but I never ever had enough monies to make it worth putting him in m' cart – I done left hims on d'curb." Sadie waddled over, huge loose combat boots clomping on the sidewalk, "Whoooooo-weee, would'ju look at that?" she pointed admiringly, "Two new locks – that Ray, he got hisself a graaaaaaaand heap in theh!"

Peter, Winston, and Janine sidled around so that they were upwind of Sadie. Janine sometimes managed to coax the bag lady into the fire station for a shower, a hot meal and a clothes-washing when the guys were out on a job and couldn't object, It had been a hot two weeks since she had been in the office so Sadie was particularly fragrant.

"Yo, Sades, remember that buck I offered you? Here's fiver. Now that Janine's back, I don't have to pay for showers any more." Peter dug into a hip pocket and handed Sadie the money. "Now, go away!"

Sadie took the bill, examined it, stuffed it into her sweaters, and continued as if nothing had happened, "Lookee theh, that ol' Ray be watchin' us from th' mail slot!"

The mail slot clanked shut, not as blocked as the mailman had assumed.

"You wants him out does you? Well, you watch ol' Sadie – an learns!"


	8. Chapter 8

Crouched bow-legged on the sidewalk, Sadie faced the mail slot after rummaging around in her cart. In front of her on the dirty concrete lay a trail of odds and ends: a tire weight, a handful of marbles, a half-smoked pack of Kools, and a ball of string, "Will you lookee theh," she scolded, "Somebody done tossed them perfectly good things out on this heah sidewalk!"

She grinned up at Peter with brown gapped teeth, "You just be ready theah, let ol Sadie handle this part."

"This _isn't_ going to work." Peter grumbled. Sadie and Janine both shushed him.

"Why, it's a perfec-ly good ol' bag a marbles and a lead weight. Who be so wasteful?" Sadie sang at the door.

After what seemed like forever, the mail slot clanked open.

There was a rustling sound from behind the door.

The mail slot clanked shut, followed by the sound of one, two, three, and five more locks being opened.

The door creaked open. A dirty hand slipped out and snatched up the ball of string. Sadie motioned them back.

The hand snagged the cigarettes.

She held up one crooked finger.

The hand snagged the tire weight.

She held up two crooked fingers.

The hand reached but couldn't quite reach the marbles.

Sadie held up three crooked fingers, and nodded.

A few minutes later, after a lot of kicking and yelling, a very dirty and disheveled Ray lay duct taped face down to the sidewalk, screaming obscenities.

"All right Madame S., that's one down." Peter said slapping at his coveralls in disgust, "So, pray tell, what does her royal Highness plan to do about the ever elusive Egon?"

"Yo, Peter, forget about Egon," Winston pointed at the police car pulling up, "We got company."


End file.
